Late night food on New Year’s Eve

[Dough4872]

Are there any late night food options in the Philadelphia area on New Year's Eve? I know a lot of local places and some chains close early. Was looking for something but not sit-down.

[gonealookin]

I don't know, but I'd be interested in knowing what you settled on for late night food on Christmas.

[Dough4872]

I don't know, but I'd be interested in knowing what you settled on for late night food on Christmas.

I ended up not going out to eat on Christmas.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Again, convenience stores will be your best bet, though most chains will be open something close to normal hours unlike on Christmas.

[Scott5114]

Are there any late night food options in the Philadelphia area on New Year's Eve?

Down an entire bottle of French dressing.

[Max Rockatansky]

Does booze count?  There might be a considerable chunk of a six pack in my evening.

[gonealookin]

Are there any late night food options in the Philadelphia area on New Year's Eve?

Down an entire bottle of French dressing.

To phrase it a little more seriously...if you're not doing something with friends on NYE (and I used to go out but decided to retire from NYE celebrations some years ago), it's a good night to just stay at home and stay off the roads.  Supermarkets are open.  Get something that's easy to prepare which would be similar to food you get at a non-sitdown restaurant.

If you MUST go out to a restaurant, I'd just go to some area that has a bunch of the sorts of 24-hour or late-night quick serve places you're looking for.  Some will probably have "Closing at 9 p.m. tonight" signs taped to the door, but a lot of people are out and about on NYE and need some food to absorb the alcohol, so there should be some options.

[NE2]

Drive out to a farm and steal produce.

[RobbieL2415]

Waffle House.

Same answer as I gave for Christmas.

[Dough4872]

I ended up going with Wawa

[vdeane]

I've found the effects of New Year's on restaurants to be annoying when it falls on a weekend.  On Saturdays I usually order pizza and wings takeout (the only exception is when I'm traveling) and eat it while watching a movie or a couple TV show episodes.  If 12/31 is a Saturday, I have to put up with the pizza place closing early and unpredictably, and if 1/1 is a Saturday, they're just closed and I have to find somewhere else (although the last time this happened I was able to order from the East Greenbush location, since they're a local chain).  At least 2028 is a leap year, so I'll only be affected by this for one year in the near future and not two.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Can we just reuse this same thread if this needs to be asked for Memorial Day, the 4th of July, Labor Day, or anything else this year?

[Scott5114]

Can we just reuse this same thread if this needs to be asked for Memorial Day, the 4th of July, Labor Day, or anything else this year?

Are there any late night food options in the Philadelphia area on Flag Day?

[kphoger]

I've found the effects of New Year's on restaurants to be annoying when it falls on a weekend.  On Saturdays I usually order pizza and wings takeout (the only exception is when I'm traveling) and eat it while watching a movie or a couple TV show episodes.  If 12/31 is a Saturday, I have to put up with the pizza place closing early and unpredictably, and if 1/1 is a Saturday, they're just closed and I have to find somewhere else (although the last time this happened I was able to order from the East Greenbush location, since they're a local chain).  At least 2028 is a leap year, so I'll only be affected by this for one year in the near future and not two.

I swear, you've got to have the most daily/weekly rituals of anyone out there.  Except maybe Adrian Monk. 

[vdeane]

I've found the effects of New Year's on restaurants to be annoying when it falls on a weekend.  On Saturdays I usually order pizza and wings takeout (the only exception is when I'm traveling) and eat it while watching a movie or a couple TV show episodes.  If 12/31 is a Saturday, I have to put up with the pizza place closing early and unpredictably, and if 1/1 is a Saturday, they're just closed and I have to find somewhere else (although the last time this happened I was able to order from the East Greenbush location, since they're a local chain).  At least 2028 is a leap year, so I'll only be affected by this for one year in the near future and not two.

I swear, you've got to have the most daily/weekly rituals of anyone out there.  Except maybe Adrian Monk. 

I honestly don't know how most people manage without all the routines.  For one thing, having everything in a routine is probably the only way I can be somewhat sane and functional.  My combination of Asperger's and ADHD means that I'm not only predisposed to having a routine, I'm prone to losing track of things that aren't part of it.  Notably, I'm less rigid about routine when I'm staying with my parents, and don't need to mentally manage as many things (and can rely on them to handle changes to plans, since I have great difficulty with doing anything that isn't planned out in advance).  That said, it's gotten worse over the years as I've lived in the same place, working the same job, and things had time to calcify.  I never used to be a local news junkie (although my parents have watched ABC World News Tonight during dinner for as long as I can remember); that started when I got my combined living room/office and fell in love with News10ABC, when watching it all the time became practical.  I never used to check a small number of subreddits every day; that started during COVID when a few of the ones I was checking to relieve boredom became a habit.  And during college I was a lot less routine-oriented during college since my schedule changed every semester and I was involved in enough extracurriculars that it wasn't practical, although I was dependent on Google Calendar to a degree that far exceeds any calendar today, even my work Outlook calendar (I also burned out halfway through my junior year and have largely remained burned out ever since, so that might have been taking on too much).

There are a also a couple things that are worth noting:
1. This particular routine is inherited, with my parents doing something similar.
2. I'm a completionist, so the idea of catching a TV show when I can and not worrying about it when I can't, or missing out on posts because I didn't have time for the forum on a given day, are both things I can't deal with.  For a TV show, if I'm a fan of something, I'm watching every episode, and while I don't read every single post on the forum, I do check every board to see what threads have new posts and read every post in the threads I watch (this actually led to a brief argument with a certain member who is very much the opposite in this respect and is prone to asking questions on things that were discussed at length just a couple pages prior in a thread).  Heck, I browse Facebook the same way, even going so far as to install FBPurity to force FB to behave itself and loading groups individually so I can try to do that with comments (which does make keeping up with more than a few groups a royal pain).

[Road Hog]

One NYE more than 10 years ago I got in late driving home from Texas and my mom hadn't cooked anything, so I took her to the local Waffle House and it was great.

[formulanone]

The problem with routines is that once you introduce something new into the permanent daily rotation, that also adds stress or takes time away from another routine, reducing its efficacy or enjoyment.

I guess this time of year I start to re-evaluate things and usually drop off a habit or two just to see if it still matters. The answer is usually "yes", but I also admit to having a fairly imperfect schedule and variations in daily rituals like work, rest, exercise, discovery, eating, creativity...et cetera which are a product of travel. So it's sometimes easier to force out habits which I don't find as enjoyable but also variable downtime without human interaction may cause negative rituals to return.

[vdeane]

The problem with routines is that once you introduce something new into the permanent daily rotation, that also adds stress or takes time away from another routine, reducing its efficacy or enjoyment.

I have enough slack in there day to day (or maybe my life is just too monotonous for it to be an issue), but it is if travel or something else disrupts things.  Trying to go to bed on time while compressing my forum activity down to one check/day is NOT fun.

So it's sometimes easier to force out habits which I don't find as enjoyable but also variable downtime without human interaction may cause negative rituals to return.

I think the "without human interaction" part is key.  I would not have anywhere near as extensive routines as I do if I had an active social life, since a huge chunk of it (especially in the evening) is essentially a substitute for one.  I watch the news and read a couple of the subreddits I do as a means of feeling a part of the local community despite not having a local social life.  And most of the remaining subreddits I check (either daily or randomly when bored) are due to me wanting to read discussions on various topics since I don't have anyone to talk to in-person about many things.

[Scott5114]

I think the "without human interaction" part is key.  I would not have anywhere near as extensive routines as I do if I had an active social life, since a huge chunk of it (especially in the evening) is essentially a substitute for one.  I watch the news and read a couple of the subreddits I do as a means of feeling a part of the local community despite not having a local social life.  And most of the remaining subreddits I check (either daily or randomly when bored) are due to me wanting to read discussions on various topics since I don't have anyone to talk to in-person about many things.

Why don't you?

I mean, I don't either, but Las Vegas is a notoriously difficult place to have a social life in, so between that, the fact that I work from home, and my own personality, I'm playing on hard mode here.

[vdeane]

I think the "without human interaction" part is key.  I would not have anywhere near as extensive routines as I do if I had an active social life, since a huge chunk of it (especially in the evening) is essentially a substitute for one.  I watch the news and read a couple of the subreddits I do as a means of feeling a part of the local community despite not having a local social life.  And most of the remaining subreddits I check (either daily or randomly when bored) are due to me wanting to read discussions on various topics since I don't have anyone to talk to in-person about many things.

Why don't you?

I mean, I don't either, but Las Vegas is a notoriously difficult place to have a social life in, so between that, the fact that I work from home, and my own personality, I'm playing on hard mode here.

I think I'm also playing on hard mode, since my Aspergers has always made interacting with people in unstructured settings difficult.  I'm at the point where I can respond in small talk easily enough, but going from small talk to deeper things isn't something I'm good at, nor is initiating conversation with people, so me getting to know people requires the other people to take the lead.  Even in college, with all my extracurriculars and whatnot, that seemed to be a better recipe for making friendly acquaintances than friends.  It probably doesn't help that something about my demeanor screams "intimidating", and the fact that I kept to myself through middle school and high school didn't do my social skills any favors, either.

It doesn't help that I didn't go to school around Albany, so I don't really know many people locally outside of work anyways.  I think the area does have a reputation for people making their friend groups in high school/college too - it's not "smallbany" for no reason, after all.  I was around for the second/third* iteration of YPT Albany before it died, but was focused on other things when the third/fourth* iteration of YPT Albany was around.  Nor does it help that I was still reeling from being six months unemployed when I first moved here, or that my energy levels seemed to tank a year or so thereafter (which may have coincided with that nasty flu I got in March 2015).

I actually did claim that I'd do more things around Albany once I got an apartment with in-unit laundry but that hasn't happened on the level that I had hoped.  I think my routine got too calcified by that point, plus I somehow assumed the problem was with having to carve out time for doing laundry when I'm pretty sure the problem is that I sleep in nearly all of the morning on Saturdays.  Plus at some point you get to such a combination of bored/stuck in a rut that your brain forgets how to not be that way.  Honestly, I might have depression.  I know I have anxiety, in addition to the Aspergers and ADHD.

*I'm not actually clear on how many attempts there have been at this point to establish an Albany chapter of Young Professionals in Transportation.  In any case, I'm not exactly a "young professional" anymore, I'm not bothering with the fourth/fifth iteration I've heard about.

[kphoger]

I'm pretty sure the problem is that I sleep in nearly all of the morning on Saturdays ... Honestly, I might have depression.

Isn't that one of the symptoms?

[vdeane]

I'm pretty sure the problem is that I sleep in nearly all of the morning on Saturdays ... Honestly, I might have depression.

Isn't that one of the symptoms?

Quite possibly.  Might also be a sign that I'm not getting nearly enough sleep the rest of the week (I tend to be really groggy in the mornings).  Or both.